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Quote:Not clearing a sidewalk within 24 hours of a snowfall could cost the homeowner around $400 if the city has to step in

This is a little misleading.

The reality is, it isn't 24 hours of a snowfall, it's 24 hours of ANY snowfall. If it snows for 7 days straight, sidewalks don't need to be cleared. Further, if you judge based on when bylaw ACTUALLY comes out, they only come out the day after a day without snow, so it's actually 36 hours, and they don't work on weekends, so if it snows on Monday, the clock resets.

Even if 100% of property owners complied with the bylaw, it would still be entirely unacceptable.

(11-06-2018, 03:43 PM)Spokes Wrote: Im curious...there's a Bell Canada owned property near my house. In the three years I've lived there they've shoveled the sidewalk exactly zero times. Zero. I wonder if they'll be fined.

Did you call and complain before? They might get fined, but there's a good chance behaviour won't change.

By the way, the way bylaw enforcement works, if they find you haven't cleared your sidewalk, they give you a notice (no fine), and then give you another 24 hours to clear your sidewalk (and really subject to all the same restrictions as above...including resetting when it snows), so another 24hours - 11 days (11 days being the longest stretch of time last winter with ZERO bylaw enforcement). If they come back and find your property still uncleared, it's sent to city crews for clearing, and city crews will get to it, not surprisingly, after they're done clearing city sidewalks 24 hours after a snowfall.

So if you report an uncleared sidewalk, and its a snowy month, it could be a month before it gets cleared.

So our sidewalk bylaw is pure GARBAGE. Councillors who voted against the pilot on the belief the bylaw can be made to work are lying their constituents, and maybe themselves.

I laid this out in my presentation to council...they choice to ignore reality.

"Our current data suggests bylaw enforcement has a positive impact on sidewalk maintenance. When infraction notices are issued, over 90 per cent of Kitchener property owners respond by clearing adjacent sidewalks within 24 hours of receiving the notice." said City of Kitchener Transportation Planning Project Manager, Aaron McCrimmon-Jones.

The most relevant portion of that quote is "When infraction notices are issued". The complaint of most of us is that there are not enough notices issued because the rules are stupid because January especially is a very precipitation-heavy month.

You should have to clear your sidewalk in any 24 hour period where accumulation exceeds some reasonable threshold. I don't know what that is, but my gut suggests 5mm.

(11-06-2018, 05:23 PM)creative Wrote: "Our current data suggests bylaw enforcement has a positive impact on sidewalk maintenance. When infraction notices are issued, over 90 per cent of Kitchener property owners respond by clearing adjacent sidewalks within 24 hours of receiving the notice." said City of Kitchener Transportation Planning Project Manager, Aaron McCrimmon-Jones.

They have absolutely no objective data.

At a base level, they have no idea what percentage of property owners would have cleared their sidewalks in that 24 hours anyway--so they cannot know whether enforcement has any direct effect on sidewalk clearance.

But probably it does, does it matter? I should put this in a keyboard macro because I say it so often: nobody cares if one sidewalk is clear. The city has no data whatsoever on how clear sidewalks are beyond complaints. How many uncleared sidewalks are unreported? They cannot even guess about this.

And as for the actual thing we care about--mobility and access for individuals? They have no idea how many people cannot travel, or own a car because of uncleared sidewalks, whether before or after the bylaw deadline.

When it comes right down too it, saying bylaw enforcement enforcement has a positive effect, I get the impression that staff don't understand statistics, survivor bias, and any kind of user focused thinking whatsoever.

I would love to know how much money is wasted on all these other efforts (by-law enforcement, snow-angel program, neighbourhood snow-blowers, overhead administration, staff time wasted defending the status quo, etc.) that could be directed to actually clearing the sidewalks.

(11-06-2018, 10:55 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: I would love to know how much money is wasted on all these other efforts (by-law enforcement, snow-angel program, neighbourhood snow-blowers, overhead administration, staff time wasted defending the status quo, etc.) that could be directed to actually clearing the sidewalks.

Perhaps I will file an FOI request to that effect.

I think the budget is public, but it might be hard to tease out the components.

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